Many business owners barely have a wage at the end of the week by the time they have paid all of the costs of doing business. This did not begin today or yesterday. Many businesses tell us they are under threat of closure. The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, is represented on the forum. I welcome that. The remit of the commission has expanded in recent years, particularly in light of EU legislation aimed at strengthening consumer protections and ensuring fairness in digital and online markets.…

I ask the Tánaiste to do a practical thing to help families impacted by the defective concrete blocks scandal. I ask him to tag on a non-consequential amendment to the emergency planning Bill to ensure homeowners currently in the process of rebuilding can avail of the updated Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, SCSI, rates. This will help bridge the gap between the building costs and the grant. It will also help those who are constrained by the cap. The Minister has accepted that the rates needed to be increase…

The legislation proposed by the Minister, if enacted, will bring Ireland in step with an EU directive that should have been transposed into domestic law in 1983. While I welcome the fact that it is better late than never that the Government is attempting to provide these protections to Irish workers, I cannot help but wonder how many more workers could have been protected if this legislation had been brought in the eighties, as should have been the case. The Government will say that workers who believe they may hav…

As we have done for several years now, I welcome Lucia, Jim, Gemma, Pia, Aimee, Hannah and the extended O'Farrell family to the Gallery today. They are absolutely the family that would not go away, and I thank them for that, although I wish they did not have to make yet another trip to the House to try to secure justice for their son and brother Shane. It was important that the truth of what happened that led to the death of Shane O'Farrell was outlined here today. Reading that into the record is important, but wha…

This evening, the Minister stands between €12 billion that has been spent on bombs and bullets to slaughter the people of Gaza. The Minister and the Government can stop that. The horrors and the genocide being visited on the people of Gaza by the State of Israel is shocking, disturbing and disgusting. I have never seen a state so devoid of humanity and so cruel and callous - a child with no head; a child crawling through the flames of a makeshift hospital camp trying to get to safety; patients burned to death as th…

I commend all the home carers and the people who are providing a great service. We need to have some truth around this situation because the Minister of State knows, going back to 2007 and 2008, we had an excellent home care service in this country. The HSE and the Minister for Health at the time went around and they chopped and chopped and privatised the service. They privatised home care, which is such a vital service. This was wrong. I have a file that thick at home since we worked at it in Mayo, because they st…

Before I talk to the Minister about the wider CAP agenda, I raise the schedule for the women's farm capital investment scheme, in which women get 60% grant aid for TAMS 3. The normal rate is 40%, so it is attractive for many women farmers. However, when drawing up the rules of the scheme, the Department set a base year of 2022 as the year a woman has to have submitted a basic payment form. It is now 2025 and a woman farmer who took on the herd number in 2023 will have submitted three basic payment forms but will st…

How much more do homeowners in Mayo and other counties impacted by defective blocks have to endure, whether they have partially completed their rebuilds or whether they are trying to get into the scheme? At every stage, homeowners were given assurances that they would not be disadvantaged by the timing that they entered the schemes. Now, homeowners who are in the middle of rebuilding their homes and lives have been told that they have to wait for legislation to be prepared and passed to enable them to avail of the …

The Minister of State said that the Government understands that this can be a difficult and challenging time for homeowners. I am sorry, but he does not and the Government does not. I am glad the Minister went to Donegal, but, my God, you would have to be hiding under a rock for the past 15 years to not know that this was one of the biggest scandals that has ever faced this country. The Minister of State has not answered the question. When is the legislation going to be amended? I am dealing with families who are r…

I thank the Deputies for bringing forward this important Bill. The aims of the Bill are honourable, and that is why Sinn Féin is happy to support it being progressed to Committee Stage. The establishment of a clear legal process for trade union recognition from employers if at least 20% of employees are members would be a very positive step for workers' rights in this State. The North is forging ahead on workers' rights issues in view of the introduction of the good jobs Bill by economy Minister, Dr. Caoimhe Archib…

I welcome the students and teachers from Coláiste Pobail Acla here today. I know the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Dara Calleary, would want to do likewise. While we are on the subject of Achill, which the Taoiseach will know is one of the most beautiful places in the world, there is a severe shortage of facilities for young people on the island such as a youth centre. They need a permanent home and a permanent youth centre. I met Foróige in Dún Ibhir last Sunday. It is doing marvellous work.

That is the question. What importance is the Government putting on facilities for young people, especially in rural areas?

Higher and further education plays a pivotal role in driving economic development, as we all know. The link between the financial circumstances of children and young people can be statistically verified, with those growing up with good financial circumstances more likely to have a third level education compared to those who experience bad financial circumstances in childhood. This is 64.1% compared to 38.7%. Therefore, we can say there is a direct correlation between government intervention and the outcomes. At thi…

I want to talk to the Minister about the importance of Ireland West Airport, or Knock Airport. I am sure that will be no surprise to the Minister or Ministers of State. I raise the importance of it in terms of the development of the Atlantic economic corridor, particularly the SDZ scheme there. If that is built to its full capacity, it could deliver more than 95,000 sq. m of commercial business and enterprise space and create 4,200 jobs. In the whole geopolitical climate and challenges we are facing at the moment, …

Today, as we mark Europe Day, it is fitting that we reflect on the huge positives that the European Union has brought to our island. I see every day, first hand, how Ireland has benefited from membership of the EU through infrastructure projects. That is not to say that we should not have critical analysis. We would not be doing our job properly if we benignly accepted every aspect of it. We need to be acutely aware of what European law is during its transposition to this country. We need to have a grown-up convers…

I wrote to the Minister in March following the announcement of 300 job losses in TikTok to ask whether he would commission an audit of job volatility in the technological sector. As it stands today, almost 5,000 staff at Intel are in limbo following the company's announcement of global cuts of 20% to its workforce. I hope, like the Minister, that all of those jobs will be retained. Has he commissioned an audit of jobs in this sector?

The threat to jobs in Intel and the job losses in TikTok come on the back of job cuts in Meta. There are reports of 300 jobs at risk at Carelon Global Solutions Ireland in Limerick. This company, as the Minister will know, provides digital integrated solutions for the healthcare industry. It has talked about its decision to consider its future in Ireland, which comes after a review of its business operations and an examination of the changing healthcare landscape globally. Is the Minister working with the staff and…

There is a real urgency around this. The Minister did not address Carelon Global Solutions and what is being done there. I take it he is in there, talking to staff, and that he has SkillNet Ireland in there as well to work with these companies and to examine available alternatives in the immediate term. The question the Government must answer is where the next decade of jobs is coming from. We need a calm, strategic response in this regard. What we do not need, in this period of economic instability, is to row back…

The Government made commitments on introducing the living wage, on enhancing paid sick leave entitlements, on abolishing the subminimum rates of youth pay, on increasing the minimum annual remuneration for employment permits and on pension auto-enrolment. The Government has reneged on all of these progressive measures. I know the Minister will say that these are just delayed but the word used is "postponement". Without concrete timeframes, workers fear that "delay" really means "deny".

What I wanted was a firm commitment that the onslaught on ordinary workers would be ended. The Minister of State has not provided me with that. Workers on the minimum wage are looking forward to the living wage, as was committed to. When they hear, in the past week, a wage of €430,000 talked about for a housing tsar to replace the housing Minister, it just does not sit right with people who are in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. The workers here did not cause the global uncertainty and they cannot be made sca…